Hometown Heroes

Myth No. 1: Multinationals are based out of megapolises.

Truth: Away from the bright lights and choked roads of our big cities, entrepreneurship is being polished to a shine by many who are working their home locations into a formidable business advantage.

Meet 45-year-old S. Susindran from Karur in Tamil Nadu. The town’s size didn’t deter Susindran’s tall ambitions to make his company, Sabare International, a true-blue global firm. His home town is dotted with spinning mills. So Susindran set up a textile mill, but steered away from set standards. Soon, he had managed to woo big retailers like Walmart and JC Penney. His next stitch—turning Sabare into a 1,000 crore company.

Myth No. 2: Exciting Indian businesses are limited to the big smokes (read: Bengaluru, Mumbai, etc). Sameer Jain would probably laugh at the idea. If he had to do it all over again, he’d still base Net Solutions out of Chandigarh. There’s little to complain about, he says, about a place where business is good, traffic isn’t a mess and the chaos is manageable.

There’s Kiron Chopra in Lucknow who knows his Aston Martin better than Bond. After all, his firm, Chopra Retec Rubber Products, recently supplied 300 pieces of a specialised suspension hangar for Aston Martin’s limited edition One77.

Clearly, towns across India are buzzing bazaars of innovative products, canny business ideas and companies redefining desi entrepreneurship. Here's our pick of the companies that are doing better than good even as they are based beyond the obvious hubs. Let’s salute them—may their thirst for business and innovation never die.

BY inc. India